Eurycea waterlooensis, the Austin blind salamander, is restricted in its distribution to the subterranean cavities of Edwards Aquifer, Travis County, Texas. It has been found in three of the four outlets of Barton Springs, a popular swimming hole in Austin, but it is thought that individuals occurring there were flushed out of the aquifer. E. waterlooensis is the blind subterranean counterpart of E. sosorum, a surface dwelling species with functional image-forming eyes that inhabits Barton Springs.

Eurycea waterlooensis was described by Hillis et al. (2001), and the specimen featured here is a paratype. It is most closely related to E. robusta, the Blanco blind salamander, and E. rathbuni, the Texas blind salamander. It differs from other species of Eurycea in the following combination of external features: perennibranchiate; external eyes absent; 12 costal grooves; limbs proportionately short; and tail fins weakly developed.

About the Species

This specimen, a paratype, was collected from Sunken Gardens Spring (an outlet of Barton Springs), Zilker Park, Austin, Travis County, Texas, on 22 January 1999 by Robert Hansen and Dee Ann Chamberlain. It was made available to the University of Texas High-resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. David Hillis of the Section of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin. Funding for scanning and image processing was provided by a National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative grant to Dr. Timothy Rowe of the Department of Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.

About this Specimen

The whole specimen was scanned by Matthew Colbert on 14 March 2001 along the coronal axis for a total of 751 518x518 pixel slices. Each slice is 0.0824 mm thick, with an interslice spacing of 0.0824 mm and a field of reconstruction of 10.12 mm.